Understanding Media Essay

 Amber-Jade Bernard-s5302303

Understanding Media Essay

Why does Disney incorporate adaptation and fandom in their company?

Walt Disney Film company was founded in 1920 by Walt Disney himself. Since then, it has grown into a multimedia conglomerate and it now owns film and television companies such as Pixar, Marvel and ESPN. In addition to this it has set up and owns a variety of theme parks worldwide, such as Walt Disney World Florida and Disneyland Paris.  In the year 2020 Walt Disney Company generated a total revenue of 16.5  billion USD  from its parks, experiences and merchandise as shown by this graph 

(Stoll 2021)

Disney has become an umbrella company as lots of companies fall under their name. As shown from this diagram below not only do Disney own their channels, parks and studios, it also owns many other companies which now fall under the Walt Disney name: for example Marvel and Star Wars. 

(Web.fx 2019)

In this essay I will show how Disney uses adaptations as they are popular with their audiences and encourages Fandom as this generates ideas for the future and helps the audience feel more involved. Both of these ultimately increase revenue.

Adaptation is defined as"An altered or amended version of a text, musical composition, etc"(Maddox 2021). Stam states that "Film adaptations of novels often change novelistic events for (perhaps unconscious) ideological reasons" (Stam 2000 p73). This is shown when Disney uses adaptation in order to create new family friendly versions of fairy tales for films. Disney's fairy tales are not original to them but have been adapted from tales told by others including Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. The originals of many of these  stories were not intended for children as these fairy tales had some very dark undertones. 

For example;

the story of Sleeping Beauty. We know the Disney version where she pricks her finger on a spinning wheel, falls asleep for 100 years until a handsome prince finds her and kisses her lips which wakes her up and then they get married and they live happily ever after. However, this differs from the original version of the story which was published in 1634 and written by Giambattista Basile. In this tale entitled Sun, Moon and Talia (Ashliman 2013) instead of the prince kissing her to wake her up, he rapes her (Allen 2020).This tale was further adapted by Charles Perrault and then by The Brothers Grimm who entitled it Briar Rose. Disney adapted this fairy tale and many other fairy tales in order to make the story more child friendly. They transform and adapt these stories into true love and happily ever after to give children hopes and dreams. The theme of the "true loves kiss" carries on in most of their princess films such as Snow White, Tangled, Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid. However, in Disney's 'Into The Woods' a film that combines many fairy tales, they do use some of the unpleasant aspects of the classic fairy tales such as the prince in Rapunzel falling into thorns and going blind which isn't shown in Tangled and the stepsisters in Cinderella cutting off parts of their feet to fit into the shoe: "Then the foolish girl cut off her big toe, squeezed her shoe and went to the King's son" (Grimm and Grimm 2021 p2299). The use of the bloodthirsty original details can be further seen in the film with the song "Careful my toe"(Baranski, Blanchard, Punch and Sondheim, 2014).  'Into The Woods' is a film created more for older children as it wasn't a cartoon and had more mature themes to it. However, true to Disney's ideals it was still suitable and the violence in the film was implied rather than shown and was portrayed in a comedic way. 

Disney also use adaptation from their own cartoon fairy tales to create real live action films in order to entertain and ultimately make more money. This has been done with a few different films such as Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Aladdin. These films are adapted by using celebrities who are well known and share some of the cartoon characteristics to boost Disney's awareness and box office and other sales. For example the choice of Will Smith to play the Genie in Aladdin (2019), Beyonce as Nala in The Lion King (2019) and Emma Watson as Belle in Beauty and the Beast (2017). Added to this Ian McKellan and Emma Thompson appear in Beauty and The Beast which will encourage older audiences to view the film.  The use of real life actors will also help audiences relate to the character and feel more involved in the film. As can be seen in the table below, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, all Disney live action remakes, grossed over one billion dollars worldwide, thus proving that live action remakes of favourite animated films are a financial success.

(Acuna 2020)

Disney also make new toys and games using these more realistic characters in order to make money from the merchandising. Having seen the actors in the role, Disney fans will want to buy merchandise which resemble the film character as shown below.

Not only have Disney adapted their fairy tale films they also have adapted Disney channel original films. Since Disney have created their streaming service Disney plus in 2020 they have put most of their films, programmes and series on there. During the COVID 19 Pandemic Disney found that their cruise ship business and the number of people at their parks were severely cut and revenue reduced by more than 20 percent. However their streaming service grew and hit 94.9 million subscribers (their goal for 4 years) in just 14 months, and so the impact of film delays  due to the pandemic was less because of Disney Plus. The streaming business increased by 73 percent with revenue of 3.5 billion dollars (Gartenberg 2021).

Disney have adapted High School Musical the film into High School Musical the Musical the Series (HSMTMTS) which was streamed on Disney Plus. This series was about high school students who went to the school that High School Musical was set in doing a production of High School Musical in their theatre group. This adapted High School Musical as it gave the story of High School Musical as well as sub narratives such as the personal lives of the new characters playing the roles. There are also cameos from the film such as the characters  Ryan and Martha, making an appearance. We see scenes of characters  watching the original High School Musical and listening to newer versions of the original songs. As a result of this songs from the soundtrack were  listened to on Spotify. The use of Disney plus shows Disney's adaptation to modern day times as they are following into streaming services much like Netflix and Amazon Prime thus helping Disney fans find the films and programmes; they are looking for all in one space. This adaptation gives Disney films more streams along with other Disney owned channels such as Disney Junior and more streams means more accounts being created as referenced above.

 As has been shown  Disney  uses adaptation as it increases it's revenue from box office, merchandise and streaming.

Fandom.  The word fandom originates from the word fan. "Fan" is an abbreviated form of the word "fanatic" (Jenkins 1992 p12)  Henry Jenkins, wrote Fandom Theory which States "Fans enjoy media texts so much that they create content based upon the text and form communities around it' (Guilsborough Academy 2019). According to Jenkins in his book Textual Poachers fans construct their own culture by "appropriating and remixing "poaching" content from mass culture". They become active participants rather than passive viewers (Jenkins1992). 

 Disney encourages fandom in their company by fans creating fan fictions. "Disney Princess Fandom Wiki"

This page gives Disney fans a place to let their creativity run wild and they can write their own fan fictions. Fan fictions that have been written include Tangled 2, Dumbo 2 and Disney Tales from Hades. These fan made stories add more detail to Disney original stories than shown in the film, such as a before the film and why the characters are like this (a prequel) or a sequel to the film and what their lives are like after what has happened at the end of the film. Fan fictions help fans feel more included in Disney's making of films because it gives them a chance to transform their ideas into reality and it makes them feel as if they are part of Disney's imaginer team. They also get to share these with other fans and Disney become aware of the needs of their fans.

Fan fictions are also created on "Wattpad". This website and app are based around fan fictions of all sorts. The Disney section is based around gender reversal where the princesses are male rather than female. These stories such as "My maid (male Elsa)" give people the chance to fall in love with the character with a different gender. Jenkins refers to this when he states that "fans may articulate their specific concerns about sexuality, gender, racism..." (Jenkins 1992 p283).

As well as fan fictions being written Disney's Fandom also has fan groups. One of the largest fan groups is called Disneyland Fan Club Meet up Group. They have 6,340 members and they arrange meet ups at parks every year.  Fan groups help Disney by having a large support group that spend money on their films which raise their box office rate as well as spending money to go to Disneyland. As a result, Disney gains more brand awareness as well as sales on items such as dolls, plushies and costumes. Fan groups meet up in order to discuss films, Disney events and new merchandise. The talk spreads awareness to other people and they end up making up their own fan fictions about what's happening which again boosts Disney's brand awareness and this also results in Disney awareness of what the fan base wants.

According to Jenkins, the development of new media since 2000 has accelerated the Fandom participatory culture. Kresninicka  states in Why understanding Fans is the New Superpower ,"digital empowerment" has shifted the power to the fans as " when we became capable of consuming, connecting and creating on our own terms, with access to multitudes of others who share our passion....the power of fandom began to show"(Kresnicka 2016) With social media evolving it makes fan groups easier to join. An example of this is "Facebook" groups like Disney fans. This group enables more fans to gather together from all over the world therefore gaining a wide range of people. This helps Disney as when they post in social media their post will go on these Facebook groups and be shared multiple times helping Disney spread their trailers, events and merchandise.

As well as fan clubs, fan pages have been adapted to social media by creating Instagram pages, WhatsApp groups and You Tube channels which gain more followers and members therefore giving attention to Disney resulting in their pictures and videos being widely shared among their followers.

Fandom helps Disney as the fan pages and stories show Disney what their fans and consumers want from their films. Disney encourages fandom as it builds a coalition of shared experiences and ideas that they can profit from. Fan groups and fan fiction create a sense of personal identity which relates to Blumer and Katzs "Uses and Gratifications theory." This theory "asserts that people use media to gratify specific wants and needs. Unlike many media theories that view media users as passive, uses and gratifications sees users as active agents who have control over their media consumption" (Vinney 2019). As Jenkins states "For the fan, watching the series is the beginning, not the end, of the process of media consumption" (Jenkins 1992 P278).

In conclusion Disney incorporates adaptation and fandom into their company because it is a way to increase revenue. They use adaptation in order to make the fairy tales more appealing to children and further adapt to live action fairy tales which include well known celebrities who are box office certainties. This links into fandom because if Disney adapts to make the fans happy then more fan pages, fan clubs and fan fictions will be written, in the hope of steering Disney into the directions fans want. Both of these theories give Disney the opportunity to see what fans want from their fan pages and fan fiction and from this they can gather the information they need to adapt their franchise to what their fans would like to see from them, such as Incredibles 2 where people waited 14 years for the second one. This gives fans input into Disney's company and therefore more people will see the films and post about the films, boosting Disney's brand awareness making more fans share what Disney is working on and therefore more people will buy tickets for the films. This increases Disney's box office sales once again keeping them in business and having more money to create more films with higher budgets to impress their audiences further.

References

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Allen, R., 2021. The dark and disturbing original stories behind your favourite Disney films. [online] Panmacmillan.com. Available at: <https://www.panmacmillan.com/blogs/general/original-disney-stories-films> [Accessed 4 March 2020].

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Jenkins, H., 1992. Textual poachers Television Fans & Participatory Culture. London, New York: Routledge, pp.12, 283.

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Stam, R. and Naremore, J., 2000. Film adaptation. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, p.73.

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